The visual systems used by different manufacturers differ widely, of course, which creates interesting tensions between issues of visual appeal, useablity, safety, and vehicle brand-consistency. Patton mines that tension with his typical intelligence:

That danger created by the conflicting worlds of map and reality has increased, thanks to the very attractiveness and style of the improved screens. The problem lies in the possibility that, as Tom Vanderbilt put it in a recent piece in Slate, “drivers, lulled by the richness of the visuals, might begin to focus excessively on this detailed, unscrolling world to the exclusion of other events.”

The world seen on the screen risks becoming more attractive than the one seen out the windshield, but then that is the threat posed by all media if abused. “You can make the same argument about any technology,” says [neuroscientist Coliin] Ellard. “Television can be educational but it’s not good to watch it 16 hours a day.” TV brings us more sports to watch than ever -- and reduces the time we put into real sports. Audio guides in museums can distract from seeing the art before us. Our lives are full of technology like this. Navigational guides may be the same way. We build clever model worlds to help us figure our way in the real world, then we forget the difference between the two.

17 November 2010

After sifting through Airbus's presentation to accident investigators, Ben Sandilands of Plane Talking has compiled a superb summary of damage caused recently when a Qantas A380 suffered an uncontained engine failure -- an incident which resulted in significant damage to the aircraft's wing, and which could have easily ended in tragedy for the 466 people who were aboard the stricken plane.

Sandilands says that A380 engine manufacturer Rolls-Royce was aware of the problem well in advance of the Qantas incident. Yet as a result of maintenance contracts that also designated Rolls-Royce as the primary service provider for the engines, the engine-maker felt little urgency in performing the modifications that might have prevented this:

Reviewing these images makes it clear why Qantas was quick, and correct, in grounding its A380 fleet.

The wing of the jet shows remarkable structural strength in sustaining damage that might have destroyed the airliners of earlier decades, but the questions as to whether control system revisions are necessary to deal with some of the consequences in terms of failed hydraulics and fuel imbalance are said to be very actively under consideration.

And the questions concerning the timeliness of the Rolls-Royce responses to a known problem, and its capacity and willingness to share them with the airlines concerned will not go away. If the engine maker doesn’t address them its customers will.

The most obvious fact to notice here is that none of these are traditional sedans -- they're all minivans, which will be good news for fans of back-seat legroom. (Which is to say, every taxi patron.)

The stakes in the competition are huge. The winner will have the exclusive right to supply roughly 13,000 vehicles for NYC's taxi fleet, beginning in 2014, generating potential sales of around $1 billion. Quite a hefty fare. (A proposal from General Motors didn't make the final cut.)

FWIW, our money is on the Ford Transit. It's the only vehicle shown here that's already sold in the U.S. Indeed, it's a proven design from a taxi-tested American manufacturer, and those factors have to carry serious weight in the final tally. With the stakes so large, it's hard to imagine going with a vehicle that right now only exists as an artists' rendering.

There’s a rare event taking place at San Francisco International Airport on Thursday evening: Movie Night! It’s a special occasion to celebrate a special anniversary in the history of commercial aviation and the city of San Francisco... but we’ll get to that in a moment.

First, take moment to recall what it’s now like to fly to China. It’s no big deal, really. You just meander to the airport, display your passport, pass through security, and pile into a swift, reliable jet airliner for nonstop service to Hong Kong, Shanghai, or Beijing. The flight is long but otherwise unremarkable, which makes it understandable (if no less a fashion faux-pas) why some Americans undertake the flight wearing track suits and sweat pants.

During that inaugural flight, the big seaplane hopscotched across the Pacific, making stops for the plane to refuel and passengers to rest overnight in Hawaii, Midway Island, Wake Island, and Guam. Seven days later, the first China Clipper landed in Manila.

This week, San Francisco International Airport and the San Francisco Aeronautical Society will host a series of events to mark that historic event, which, in its own less-famous way, was as much of a world-transforming feat as the completion of the Transcontinental Railway and the opening of the Panama Canal. San Francisco played an essential role in this.

After 1935 and until the outbreak of World War II, Pan American’s commercial air service from San Francisco blossomed and expanded. Gradually, the first Martin M-130 seaplanes were replaced by sleek Boeing 314 Flying Boats.

Pan American, meanwhile, headquartered itself at Treasure Island -- which was originally built to serve as a major international airport. Indeed, for those who know where to look, much of the island’s aviation infrastructure remains intact, even today.

Notice, for example, that the Administration Building at the entrance to Treasure Island -- which once served as Pan American’s passenger terminal -- still features a cute little control tower dome on its roof:

Notice also that the two giant hangars that were erected to service and maintain Pan American’s flying boats still stand:

And if you look closely along the shoreline, you can make out the concrete ramp that the giant planes used to transition in and out of the waters of Clipper Cove, which is named after the Pan American Airways China Clippers that once moored there:

To mark this 75th anniversary, SFO and the San Francisco Aeronautical Society have planned a week-long celebration that will include a reunion of China Clipper crew, lectures and book signings, and a special dinner on Treasure Island.

And that brings us back to Thursday’s Movie Night at the Airport.

Telstar Logistics will be at SFO on Thursday for a unique airport screening of China Clipper, a 1936 Humphrey Bogart film that dramatizes the early years of Pan American Airways, culminating in the inauguration of air service from San Francisco to China. (Watch the trailer here.)

Now the Wall Street Journal ties these threads together by taking us deep inside the subculture of San Francisco motorists who drive three-wheeled carts formerly used by parking enforcement officers -- aka meter maids. The WSJ says:

The shock value is part of the allure of owning a meter-maid vehicle, as people call the tricycles. A fringe of motorists across the U.S. are ditching cars for retired three-wheeled utility vehicles. They troll websites and government auctions to find used models that they can get for between $500 and $7,000, depending on model, condition and upgrades.

[...]

A driver in cities like San Francisco can park a three-wheeler at the curb like a motorcycle, making it a breeze to find a parking spot on crowded streets. "Like Smart cars but smarter," says Mr. Bennett, because Daimler AG's two-seater Smart ForTwo minicars, though shorter than meter-maid cars, have to parallel-park because they have four wheels. (Parking rules vary by city.)

Common meter-maid models include the Go-4 Interceptor from Westward Industries Ltd. and the Truckster from Cushman Inc. Though data on how many people own used meter-maid cars aren't available, three-wheeler owners say the vehicles have become more popular in recent years as the price of gas has risen.

The Journal also put together a video about the three-wheeler scene, which is worth watching (after their annoying advertisement):

13 November 2010

Telstar Logistics is visiting our ancestral homeland in western New Jersey this weekend, where the weather has been lovely and the fall foliage is in full radiance.

To entertain ourselves, we took our ancestral chariot for a drive through the countryside yesterday. It's a 1973 Chevrolet Caprice convertible that's been in the family since the day it rolled off the showroom floor. It's got a 400 cubic-inch V-8 under the hood and an 8-Track tape player in the dash, and all of it works just like new.

Today was warm and sunny, so we dropped the top on the Caprice to enjoy the autumn scenery in full, windblown Surround-O-Vision.

With our mission accomplished and our bellies full, we continued our meanderings along the wooded back roads, savoring the warmth of the sun, the blaze of fall colors, and the sublime pleasure that such a day, and such a place, and such a car so readily delivers...

12 November 2010

That's the World War II P-38 Lightning that was (miraculously) recovered from under 268 feet of glacier ice in Greenland in 1992. We wrote about Glacier Girl in 2007, and we're pleased to report that she's now throughly defrosted. In fact, she looks -- and sounds -- good as new, as you can see in this deliciously anatomical video walk-around filmed at the Planes of Fame Museum in Chino, Calif.

11 November 2010

Once upon a time not all that long ago, we lived a few blocks away from Lost Weekend Video, an excellent mom-and-pop video rental shop in San Francisco's Mission District. For many years, it was our preferred movie-rental provider. Then things changed, and we found ourselves visiting Lost Weekend less and less often.

Why? For one, we moved a few blocks farther away, which made the store that much less convenient. But even more, we got a Netflix account, which eliminated the need to go to any video store whatsoever. Yet even as miserable chains like Hollywood Video and Blockbuster shuttered their local stores, Lost Weekend is still open -- even today.

But tomorrow is uncertain.

Telstar Logistics walked by Lost Weekend Video recently, and when we did we saw this clever-but-sad commentary about technological change and creative destruction posted in the store's window, along with a yellowed clipping of this September 30, 2010 article from the Wall Street Journal, entitled "Fade-Out Nears for Video Stores."

As Netflix and cable entered the fray, consumers turned away from video stores and spent more entertainment time online, on sites such as YouTube and early services that streamed movies to computers. Automated DVD-rental kiosks have taken a bite, too.

By 2007, the number of video-rental shops in New York halved from its 1997 level of 1,206, according to census data. In Los Angeles, stores fell to 595 in 2007, down from 1,047 a decade earlier.

In 2010, physical rentals from U.S. video shops are expected to be down 56% to $3.65 billion, from the 2001 peak, according to SNL Kagan. In the wake of this week's bankruptcy filing, Blockbuster is expected to close a big chunk of its roughly 3,000 stores (a few years ago it had more than 5,800). Movie Gallery, the owner of Hollywood Entertainment, liquidated in February.

As video shops, like record stores before them, began to vanish, trips to Blockbuster or the corner rental shop were reserved for "old times' sake" or a novel date night.

Lost Weekend soldiers on, for now, but when we spoke to the store's proprietors, they were candid: Times are tough, they said. As an indication of that, in the window of their shop they posted the lyrics to a sing-along remake of a familiar song about an earlier generation technological change, specially modified to suit today's circumstances:

We've transcribed the lyrics below. Start up the melody to "Video Killed the Radio Star" in your head, then sing-along to this clever new version to honor the memory of your favorite video store, wherever it might have been...

10 November 2010

AirPigz points us toward this excellent cockpit video footage of a US Navy Blue Angel F-18 refueling in the clouds:

This video from 2009 would be cool enough if it was just an F-18 sucking up some gas from a KC-135, but it's more than that. It's a Blue Angels, F-18 sucking up some gas! Oh but wait, it gets even better... they're actually flying thru the tops of the clouds while the Blue Angels F-18 is sucking up some gas!

And to top it all off (no pun intended), the pilot has added some excellent voice-over to explain a little about the refueling process.

09 November 2010

As we all know, a cougar (Puma concolor couguar) is a carnivorous four-legged mammal found throughout the North American continent.

During the late 1960s and early 1970s, however, thanks to the Lincoln-Mercury Division of the Ford Motor Company, the Cougar personal luxury car became synonymous with a very different kind of creature: A middle-aged American male on the prowl to find nubile young females for sexual conquest.

Telstar Logistics was reminded of this recently when we encountered the 1969 Mercury Cougar shown in the photos above. A lot has changed during the last 40 years, and today -- alas -- not only is the Mercury Cougar gone, but so is Mercury.

The culture has moved on as well. Today "cougar" is synonymous with a different kind of creature: A middle-aged American female on the prowl to find strapping young males for sexual conquest.

The B.M.T. train ride from Brooklyn to Manhattan. In 1898, the modern City of New York was formed with the consolidation of Brooklyn (until then an independent city), Manhattan and outlying areas. The opening of the Brooklyn Bridge in 1883 did for the city what railroad expansion and the Erie Canal did for the nation. The population was expanding due to immigration and commerce was booming. In less than five years the need for several more bridges would be apparent as Williamsburgh and the rest of Brooklyn also grew in population. On Manhattan "uptown" was moving quickly past 14th Street. Soon, people would be calling it "downtown." The subway system was already on its way.

08 November 2010

Yves Rossy is a 51 year-old Swiss pilot who has developed a technology that allows him to strap a pair of carbon-fiber wings on his back and fly through the air powered by four small jet engines. Cleverly, he has branded himself "Jetman." Quite possibly, he is completely insane.

Fortunately, he's also technically adept and more than a little lucky. Rossy has been flying successfully with his strap-on wings since 2006, completing such feats as crossing the English Channel and flying in formation with conventional prop-driven aircraft:

Last week, Jetman notched a new first by completing two aerial loops while wearing his tiny wings 7800' above Lake Geneva. From his website:

The Swiss Yves Rossy took off from Bercher at 9:45 am (Swiss time) this morning on board of the hot-air balloon “Esprit Breitling Orbiter” , piloted by Brian Jones, to reach an altitude of 2.400 meters in 18 minutes. His wing on his back, the 4 jet-engines turned on, he jumped out of the balloon’s basket. He flew a few minutes to stabilize his wing and find the optimal angle to begin two loopings. Jetman executed a rotation in front of the balloon. Then, he deployed his parachute to land in Denezy (VD).

This flight has been achieved with Yves Rossy’s new wing, smaller (2 meters instead of 2.5 meters) and without unfoldable parts. This new prototype, designed by Yves and the RUAG Company, possesses a better aerodynamic profile and more stability. Two years after crossing the Channel, these technological evolutions allowed Jetman to perform his first acrobatics in the air.

Aviation Week pulled together a nice video about the Jetman's feat, which you can watch below. Behold, marvel, and pity the Jetman's life insurance provider:

Telstar Logistics visited San Francisco's Chinatown last weekend, and along the way we encountered one of the simplest and most delightful examples of public art that we've come across in quite some time.

It happened while were were parking inside the city-owned North Beach Garage, where we were pleased to discover that each parking space is marked with a fortune cookie-style snippet of wisdom.